Authors: R.A. Salvatore
“A
ARRGH
! P
UT IT BACK
! P
UT IT BACK
!” S
EANO
B
ELLICK ROARED. HE FELL TO HIS
knees, grabbing at his bloody stump, his hand lying a few feet away, still clutching the handle of his axe.
Pony walked right by him, paying him no heed. “Belli’mar Juraviel?” she called. “Are you about? Or another of the Touel’alfar, then? To be sure, I know that arrow!”
“What’re ye talkin’ about, girl?” Belster O’Comely asked, coming around the wagon.
“My hand!” Seano howled. “Put it back, I say! Use your magic, I beg you!”
“I cannot put your hand back on your arm,” Pony said sharply, turning on him with a snarl.
“You must!”
“There is no such magic!” Pony scolded, and it took all of her willpower to stop her from walking over and kicking the ugly brute in the face.
Seano Bellick wailed pitifully, still clutching at his torn stump. He reached for the hand with his remaining one, but recoiled as his fingers neared it, too afraid to even touch the gruesome thing. And he had to bring his hand back to his stump, for as soon as he let it go, the blood started spurting all over again.
“I’ll bleed out!” the man cried. “Oh, but you killed me! Oh, you witch woman! You killed me!”
Belster walked up beside Pony, the two staring at the pitiful sight. “What’re ye thinkin’?” Belster asked, for Pony made no move, either for her gemstone or for any bandages. She just stood there, staring at Seano Bellick as the man’s lifeblood trickled forth.
“Girl?” Belster asked, after a long moment passed without her showing any intention of responding.
“Bleeding out,” Seano said, his voice weaker, breaking with sobs.
“I believe that Belli’mar Juraviel or one of his kin is about,” Pony said to Belster, turning away from Seano. “The archer was felled by a Touel’alfar arrow, right through the eye.”
“What of it?” Belster asked, motioning toward Seano.
“Am I not worthy of your healing, good woman?” Seano pleaded. “You then,” he said to Belster.
“Are ye to be judgin’ them ye mean to heal?” Belster asked in all seriousness, but to Pony’s back, for she’d started away, looking up at the trees in hopes of catching a glimpse of Juraviel.
That comment stung Pony and she turned fiercely.
“I’m not sayin’ ye shouldn’t be,” Belster explained. “I’m just askin’ so ye can get it clear in yer own head. Ye got one lookin’ for healin’, and needin’ yer healin’, and ye got the healin’, but are ye to tend only those ye’re thinkin’ deservin’?”
“I cut them just to fix them?” Pony asked.
Belster gave a shrug.
He wouldn’t commit to an answer, but the question alone had given her his opinion of the matter, of course, had held a mirror up before Pony’s anger so that she could clearly see that growling expression upon her own face.
She had the power now of life or death over Seano, and over so many. The gemstone, the gift of God, bestowed that upon her, and thus was she to play in the role of God, as judge of the man and all the others? She nearly laughed aloud at the absurdity of it, but she went for her soul stone and moved close to Seano.
Before she fell into the magic of the gem, she looked the man straight in the eye and promised coldly, “If ever you try to steal from me again or to hurt me or any of my friends or any other innocent person, I will hunt you down and we will replay this fight. My gemstone cannot attach a severed hand, nor, I promise you, can it attach a severed head.”
Pony went into the stone and sealed up the blubbering Seano’s wound in short order.
“What say you, Juraviel?” she called to the boughs. “Would the Touel’alfar have shown such mercy?”
“The Touel’alfar would have properly finished the job in the first place,” came the answer of a melodic, and most welcome, voice. “A thrust through the heart, perhaps, and certainly nothing as messy as you have shown.
“The third archer has long fled,” the still-unseen elf informed her. “Have Belster send this fool along down the south road, and then you come out into the forest to the north, that we might speak privately.”
Pony looked plaintively at Belster.
“Must have somethin’ important to tell ye, then,” the innkeeper remarked, and he moved for Seano Bellick. “Come on, ye great feeder of the pig. Get ye back to Caer Tinella, where ye can tell ’em all that ye met with Pony, and met with disaster. Aye, that’s the way of it, ye met with the disaster named Pony!”
“Well put,” Pony remarked sarcastically, and she walked northward, as Belster half walked and half carried the shocked Seano south.
“Did I do well, then?” Pony asked Juraviel when she finally spotted the elusive elf siting on a bare branch a dozen feet off the ground.
“In fighting or in healing?” Juraviel asked.
“Both.”
“If that clumsy thug gave you any trouble in battle, then surely I would have questioned Nightbird’s sanity in ever teaching you
bi’nelle dasada
,” the elf replied. Even as he spoke the words, Pony noted that there was indeed some strain behind his jovial façade. “In healing him, you did as I knew you would.”
“What would Belli’mar Juraviel have done?” Pony asked.
“I would have killed him cleanly in the first place, as I said,” the elf answered matter-of-factly, with that cold and calm pragmatism that almost always crept into the thinking of any of the unforgiving Touel’alfar.
“But if you did not,” Pony pressed, “if you found yourself in the same situation as I just faced, would you have tended his wound?”
Belli’mar Juraviel spent a long while honestly considering the question. Certainly many of his kin, Lady Dasslerond among them, would have let the man die—elves showed no mercy to any
n’Touel’alfar
whose actions labeled them as enemies. “I would have been sorely disappointed in you if you had let the fool die,” was all the answer that Juraviel would give. “And so would you, a profound failing within yourself, a clear contradiction of that which you are, one that would have haunted you for all your days.”
It was Pony’s turn to pause and reflect, and she found herself nodding her agreement, glad indeed that she had not let Seano die. “Are you to sit up there all the night?” she asked suddenly. “Or are you to come down here and give an old friend a hug she sorely needs?”
How Belli’mar Juraviel wanted to go to her and do just that! He even started propping himself off of the branch. But two words,
rosy plague
, echoed in his mind. He had no idea, of course, if there really was such a plague beginning in the human lands, had no evidence except for rumors coming from an unknown source about some problems far in the southland.
But for Belli’mar Juraviel, this moment sang out to him as another critical choice in his life’s course. If there was a plague, and Pony had contracted it, and, in going to her, Juraviel brought it upon himself, then what would happen to Andur’Blough Inninness? Could the elven population, so tiny, survive such a plague?
Belli’mar Juraviel weighed the odds that Pony was so infected, and they seemed long indeed. Very long. But he was Touel’alfar, and she was not. It came down to something as simple as that.
And there was one other thing that Belli’mar knew, whether he admitted it to himself or not: if he went down to Pony and hugged her, if he allowed himself to recognize the deep and abiding friendship between them, the love that had bound him to the sides of Elbryan and Pony all the way to the dungeons of St.-Mere-Abelle and back, then how could he not tell this woman of the child now living in Andur’Blough Inninness? Her child, Elbryan’s child.
“You have a soul stone,” he remarked suddenly, needing to change the subject. “Where are your others?”
Pony shrugged. “I hardly care,” she said honestly. “Nor is the Church overly concerned. More gemstones will find their way out of the abbey coffers.”
“You have heard this?” Juraviel asked, and he truly wanted to know. If the magical gemstones began flowing out of the various abbeys, the implications to the Touel’alfar could be significant and dire.
“I sense it,” Pony answered. “The era of Markwart, and the centuries of policies
that led to the creation of such an animal as he, has ended, and the era of Avelyn will soon begin.”
“You believe that Avelyn would be careless with the stones?”
“I believe that Avelyn would put them where they could do the most good,” Pony answered confidently. “As he did with the turquoise he gave to Symphony, to heighten the bond between the horse and Elbryan.”
Juraviel let it go at that, understanding Pony’s mind in this, and knowing that any further answers from her would be nothing more than conjecture. Juraviel understood, and was even a bit envious, of the motivations behind those avowed followers of Avelyn: a generosity and clear mission to make all the world a better place. But Juraviel was more pragmatic and realistic than to believe that their plans would be realized so easily. The gemstones were power, pure and simple, and letting that kind of power out into the world could have many more disastrous side effects than those people blinded by compassion could ever foresee.
Humans did not live a long time, Juraviel reminded himself. They considered a mere century as more than a lifetime, and so they often acted shortsightedly; humans would do that which helped immediate situations, often to disastrous effect for future generations.
But Belli’mar Juraviel was not human; he was Touel’alfar and had seen the birth and death of several centuries. Pony’s words now only strengthened the elf’s feelings on that which he had to do and made Juraviel wonder honestly if Lady Dasslerond hadn’t foreseen this impending change in Church policy.
“I tell you this last thing because I am your friend,” Juraviel said. “Understand well the gift that Nightbird gave to you; it is, among my people, as high an honor as can be bestowed.”
“Bi’nelle dasada,”
Pony reasoned a moment later.
“It was not his to give,” Juraviel explained. “And he should not have done so, not even to you, without Lady Dasslerond’s permission.”
Pony didn’t even begin to know how to answer that surprising remark.
“And it is not yours to give,” Juraviel went on, his tone turning grave. “I have sworn that you will not, and based upon my trust in you, Lady Dasslerond allowed you to live,” Juraviel said. Each word he spoke made Pony’s blue eyes open a bit wider in sheer astonishment. “I pray that you do not betray that trust.”
“I would never,” the woman breathed.
“So I told my lady,” said Juraviel. “And I would not even have told you of this, except that I fear that you do not understand the power of that gift and the need that we have to keep it secret.”
“Never,” Pony agreed.
“Belster returns,” the elf announced, seeing the man bouncing up the path toward Pony.
“His archer friend found him down the road,” the innkeeper said to Pony when she turned to regard him. “I think the fool dropped his bow when ye chased him off. Pity for the two o’ them if they find highwaymen waitin’ for them down the
way a bit!”
Ironic and fitting, Pony thought, and she turned back to the tree and Juraviel.
But the elf was already long gone.
B
y the time he neared Dundalis, Juraviel was certain that he had left Pony and Belster far, far behind. Pony had come after him, once, on that first night after he had left her with Belster. Using the soul stone, the woman had flown out of body, covering miles in seconds. Juraviel had felt her presence, and keenly, had even heard her telepathic call—and not just her feelings, but actual words, asking for an explanation.
But the elf had pretended not to hear, or at least, not to hear well, so that he had merely whispered farewell several times and kept on his speedy way. Soon, Pony had given up the chase.
Truly, the dismissal of his friend was tearing Belli’mar Juraviel apart, as was the secret of the child being trained in Andur’Blough Inninness. The entire result of the demon war was not as Juraviel had hoped or predicted. First he had lost one of his very best friends, Tuntun of the Touel’alfar, in the bowels of Aida. And then Nightbird had fallen. And now this. Juraviel had envisioned himself sitting on a hillock with Bradwarden and Nightbird and Jilseponie, trading stories and listening to the centaur’s song. It was a fantasy Juraviel had played out in his mind a hundred times, and now that it could not come to pass, it was a continual emptiness, a pang he felt forever within his heart.
All that he could hold against that pang, all that he could use to battle back, was the truth of his heritage. He was Touel’alfar, and would have outlived Nightbird and Pony, and their children’s children’s children.
Barely three days after his encounter with Pony, Juraviel found himself in the forest of the Timberlands again, following the song of Bradwarden, and found the centaur and Roger at their favorite hillock under the starry sky. Juraviel noted with interest that the stallion, too, was nearby, tethered to a tree at the base of the open mound.
“Taked ye long enough,” the centaur remarked, lowering his pipes, and Roger came up on his elbows.
“Sooner than agreed,” Juraviel replied. “We said a week, and yet only six days have passed. Will you need the seventh to finish preparing the horse?”
Roger’s groan was telling indeed.
“No, he’s as good as he’s to get for now,” Bradwarden answered. “A fiery little beastie, don’t ye doubt. Ye’ll be findin’ yer road a spirited run, but he’ll take a saddle, at least.”
“Then I will be gone before the dawn,” the elf announced, surprising both his friends.
“In a hurry, are ye?”
“I am not out for pleasure, but on an errand for my lady,” Juraviel explained. “She bade me return with all haste, and so I shall.”
Roger looked from Juraviel to the centaur curiously. “Are you coming up for a drink, at least?” he asked, for Juraviel had stopped halfway up the hillock, and showed no signs of coming any closer.
“Presently,” the elf answered. “I have a bit more to do to prepare for the road. I met Jilseponie on the road north of Caer Tinella.” Roger perked up at that. “She and Belster should arrive within a few days.”